Jacob, I love this. When crisis hits, suddenly historians have valuable information and wisdom that is otherwise considered a “non-essential, irrelevant” field when times are good and the economy-religion seems to be working…

This kind of long-term wisdom is what indigenous groups around the world have had and are trying to preserve…I regularly hope that we all find a way to better appreciate that knowledge. If things *really* fall apart, who else are we going to turn to to find out what grows here, how to live off the land in its natural cycle (not full of imported crops, etc)…if such a thing still exists, of course!

@Rosie – So is the problem of failing to learn from history because histories are not good enough (they don’t record the essentials) or because there are not enough people with a historic background (and the ability to think like a historian?)

@Kevin – What you’re referring to is a climax stage, a dynamic equilibrium. It is a fairly big component of the book I’m working on.
I think what matters for the Amish is not where the line is, but that it is there. I have drawn lines in my life as well.

You might enjoy Dune (Frank Herbert) or the Foundation series (Isaac Asimov) as well. Those both cover hundreds (thousands) of years.

For real world theory, look into Kondratieff waves.

I have thought about communicating our knowledge before, but not in the generational theme. Which brings up another question. Would a 500 year old human really help provide new information? At this point in human history we have access to immense amounts of information. Much of it from people 100, 200, 300..etc. years old. Aren’t we already getting generational information past the 3rd generation?

The problem seems more with how we teach/communicate this knowledge, than actually having people live to be 500. We have the Elves of Tolkein living with us right now in the form of books, music, movies and the internet if we can just get people to put forth the effort to acquire the information.

Who in their right mind would ever go to war by choice after watching Band of Brothers, Tears of the Sun, Platoon or Saving Private Ryan? No one. Unfortunately, most people are never in their right minds. They make the decision because it’s easy, not because it’s the right decision.

Religion is a big part of this problem. It claims answers when it has none and, as you said, it promotes lazy minds. We don’t need religion to pass down generational information anymore. We have better methods if we can just harness them and convince the general public that the effort needed adds value.

This discussion brings up something else I have been thinking about. The world appears to be breaking down a lot of traditional walls, such as national borders, trade restrictions, and even money is being broken out of the Western nations and spread around to a lot of the world. However, there appears to be a new wall being built between those with knowledge and those without, and the wall appears to not care if you are in a rich or poor nation.

A good example is the current election. I know a significant number of people that believe a Harvard degree is less desirable than small town wisdom. There is actually a bias against education in this country, on a fairly large scale.

@The Executioner – No, I’ll put it on my list. Thanks 🙂

@Chad – Information per se is not very useful. Knowledge, which is the combination of facts is. Wisdom, which is the combination of knowledge and values, is even better. In scientific research, you will see new information being added constantly. The funny thing though, is that knowledge is not added progressively in the same way. Instead it is rediscovered as the individual scientists mature in their understanding. To put it in other words, there is a lot of understanding that is presently held in people’s brains that is not written down anywhere. If we lose a couple of generations of scientists, it’s straight back to the dark ages. It can not be recovered by reading books. I’ll make the same claim about markets. We have a lot of information about markets. They are supposed to be efficient simply due to some very smart people taking advantage of the opportunities. Yet clearly, they are not efficient. Now having some wisdom of one market cycle, I know more than when I just had the information from a text book in how to react. I have 3 market cycles left in my investment career (before I die).

@firefighter – Science is a recent method of thinking about the world. It seems to uniquely hold the idea that the universe is consistently governed by laws that can be discovered by humans rather than by supernatural powers. I am not aware of any major religion that is less than 300 years old and I would not say that science as a “major cosmology” is older than that (at least for our purposes). Hence last. (As for the Greeks it seems they thought of science more as a philosophy than something applicable. They were very close to inventing the steam engine, but only used steam to open doors. After that technological progress took a break of 1500 years.)

@ Firefighter

“I think religions provide a framework for most people mainly because the corresponding intellectual understanding requires a vast effort to cover the same bases.”

Jacob’s quote isn’t as simple or as harsh as mine (unintended), but it clearly states that religion is used to significantly reduce the effort in explaining the universe. Since, science and religion have different explanations, and reducing work isn’t bad if you still get a good result, this quote suggests that people are taking the easy, but incorrect way out. Thus, I inferred a lazy mind. Did I infer too much? Maybe, but even if I did, Jacob’s statement isn’t a positive statement on religion no matter how you look at it.

Naming intelligent people on either side of the religious/athiest discussion is not a valid argument, as both sides have them. Plus, in many cases, no one really knows for sure what their beliefs were. Einstein being one of the most controversial, as a religious person can find quotes “proving” Einstein believed in god and an athiest can find quotes “proving” he didn’t.

@Chad – Religion sounds much like grad school (you forgot the distant reward) 😉 or quite like any other educational institution.

The question is which risk management approach is “best”.

1) Emergent behavior can not be known. Therefore it is best to broadly educate people so that they can take some action when unknown problems emerge.

2) Emergent behavior can be known. Therefore it is best to train people so that their response in the event of an accident is predictable. Even if the response it not correct, it eases the management task.

On top of that is the question of whether enough people can be sufficiently broadly educated. To give an example, the military follows model 2 and universities follow model 1.

So if I believe model 2 works best on the general population I would indeed suggest making knowledge religious, moral, or at least traditional. I am not wise enough to tell though.

“Guess it also depends on how you define “good” and “bad”.

Longer lifespans would definitely improve our wisdom and culture base. Imagine if we had access to people who were actually alive during the time of the Roman Empire, or of the Mongol Conquests. Imagine if we could speak to those who were there when the Renaissance was taking place.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people alive who had parents and grandparents who experienced the great depression, and they still charge everything on credit… maybe simulated reality would be even better but then this is more farfetched than just increasing lifespans.

In the novel “Accelerando”, people are able to “fork” their mind patterns into thousands of instances, which then experience different simulated outcomes and eventually remerge into one pattern. It’s like a case of extreme accelerated learning, as you could test out the same scenario hundreds or even thousands of times in different ways. Again, this is pretty far-fetched stuff though. Extending lifespans is much more feasible given what we know and understand today.”

In 3G socities like ours, the wisest advisers are 35 years old. Some of them anyway. 😉

This reminds me of the Books “Methuselahs Children” and “Time Enough for Love” by Robert Heinlein.

In the book a group of people is bred to be long lived, there is a special trust fund set up to encourage breeding amongst those with long lived ancestors. Eventually the whole galaxy is populated with descendants of these people. Time enough for love is sort of like a collection of short stories that follows the protagonist throughout his long life. Methuselahs children is full story but should probably be read before TEFL.

Great books BTW. Everyone should read them who enjoys good science fiction and is interested in the question “What if you lived for ever?”

Sure, I could imagine to have around people that remember Waterloo… It could be a entertaining. Would it change anything – I do not believe it.
We rarely (if ever) learn even from our mistakes, and almost never from others’ mistakes. As a matter of fact, some of the problems we as a society have are rooted in the influence of the part of the population that is over 50 years old, do you want it to be 150? (same for the history, it is written by the winning side, and the teachers’ main goal is to present it the “right way”, not the truth).
How about a more radical change, like, if the years we enjoy (or suffer from) the sex drive are say, only 10? Or, it stays at the same level till the day we die?